But because little research has been done on the effects of e cigarettes, such moves lack a solid scientific grounding. It is generally accepted that the devices are safer than conventional cigarettes, although studies by the FDA and Health New Zealand, a research consultancy based in Christchurch, have shown that some brands contain carcinogens and other toxic chemicals, including diethylene glycol and N nitrosamines (A. D. Flouris and D. N. Oikonomou Br. Med. J. 340, c311 2010).

If e cigarettes are used in moderation, the nicotine doses they provide may be lower than those attained from smoking cigarettes. But although the devices are smoke free, nicotine itself causes high blood pressure and palpitations, and is highly addictive. Little is known about the long term effects of e cigarette vapour.

Some experts think e cigarettes are a saviour. They may kill smoking as we know it, says Peter Hajek, director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit at Barts and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry. That s the biggest hope we have of ending the tobacco epidemic.

But as big tobacco companies have piled into a market worth more than US$2 billion worldwide, regulators have failed to keep up, in part because the chemicals in e cigarettes vary so widely. Some countries, such as Norway and Brazil, have banned the products. But in the United States, e cigarettes are currently regulated only if they are marketed as quitting aids. The United Kingdom has said it will regulate them as medicines meaning they will have to meet strict quality standards but its regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, is holding fire until the new European rules are in place.

The decisions that regulators make will shape not just the future of the industry but also the public health response and scientists both for and against e cigarettes have waded into the debate while regulation is still up in the air.

Right now, electronic cigarettes are the triumph of wishful thinking over data, says Stanton Glantz, a tobacco control researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who thinks that the products should be regulated. He points to a report released earlier this month by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, that shows some children who have never smoked cigarettes are using e cigarettes, suggesting that the devices may be a gateway product. And he notes that several surveys have reported high levels of smokers using both cigarettes and e cigarettes, indicating that the products are being used to sustain nicotine addiction. The use of vapour flavourings, such as vanilla, could also be seen as an attempt to prolong use and appeal to younger consumers.

Other scientists, such as Hajek, say that regulating e cigarettes as medical devices would be a disaster. He believes that the cost of complying with rules for medical devices would allow big tobacco companies to dominate the nascent e cigarette industry, squeezing out innovative new products.

To overregulate now could threaten the existence of e cigarettes and cut down the options for people who want to quit, agrees Christopher Bullen of the National Institute for Health Innovation at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. He was the lead author on a study published this month showing that e cigarettes were as effective as nicotine patches in helping smokers to quit (C. Bullen et al. Lancet 2013).

Vaughan Rees, a tobacco researcher at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, Massachusetts, thinks that e cigarettes need to improve before they can replace cigarettes and that, for now, they should be regulated as tobacco products. Although they do present an opportunity to improve public health, he adds, care needs to be taken to ensure that they don t flourish alongside conventional cigarettes. Then we ve got a double problem, he says.

Eating a diet heavy on meat and cheese may be as harmful to you as smoking a cigarette, researchers claim.

A new study, published in Cell Metabolism on March 4, shows that middle aged people who eat a diet high in animal proteins from milk, meat and cheese are more likely to die of cancer than someone who eats a low protein diet. The research also showed the people who ate lots of meat and dairy were more likely to die at an earlier age.

Play Video Health Lots of meat, dairy as bad as smoking Study

Daily health headlines A diet high in animal proteins linked to early death, hospitals doling out too many antibiotics, plus fruits and veggies …

“There’s a misconception that because we all eat, understanding nutrition is simple. But the question is not whether a certain diet allows you to do well for three days, but can it help you survive to be 100?” study co author Valter Longo, Edna M. Jones professor of biogerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute in Los Angeles, said in a press release.

Longo had previously done research on a protein that controls a growth hormone called IGF I, which aids in body growth. Very high levels of IGF I have been associated with an increased cancer risk.

People produce less of the growth hormone after the age of 65, at which time they become frailer and lose muscle. While eating a diet high in animal proteins has been frowned upon during middle age, some studies have encouraged older adults to chow down on meats and cheeses because it makes them less likely to develop disease.

In his previous work, Longo had looked at a group of short Ecuadorian people who rarely developed diabetes or cancer. They had a genetic mutation that lowered their levels IGF I, which also kept them under 5 feet tall.

For the new study, researchers looked at 6,318 adults over the age of 50. On average, about 16 percent of their total daily calories came from protein. Two thirds of that amount was from animal protein.

The team divided the group into high, moderate and low protein diet eaters. Protein could come from plant or animal sources. High protein diets were made up of at least 20 percent protein. Moderate protein eaters consumed 10 to 19 percent of their daily calories from protein. Low protein diets consisted of less than 10 percent of daily calories from protein.

People who ate high protein diets were 74 percent more likely to die before the end of the study than those who ate low protein diets. Decreasing protein consumption from moderate to low levels reduced early mortality risk by 21 percent.

The team found that plant based proteins were not as detrimental to health as animal based proteins.

A smaller subsection of the sample group 2,253 people had their IGF I levels recorded. They found that those who consumed the highest levels of animal proteins were four times more likely to die of cancer than those who had low protein diets. That increased rate was similar to the cancer risk between smokers and non smokers. Moderate protein consumers were three times more likely to die from cancer.

“Almost everyone is going to have a cancer cell or pre cancer cell in them at some point. The question is Does it progress?” Longo said. “Turns out one of the major factors in determining if it does is protein intake.”

Another study in the same issue showed mice who were on a low protein diet for two months were less likely to get cancer than those who were on a high protein diet. If they did, they had 45 percent smaller tumors.

“We have shown explicitly why it is that calories aren’t all the same we need to look at where the calories come from and how they interact,” senior author Steve Simpson, a researcher at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre, said in a press release. “This research has enormous implications for how much food we eat, our body fat, our heart and metabolic health, and ultimately the duration of our lives.”

Gunter Kuhnle, a food nutrition scientist at the University of Reading in the U.K., warned that it was dangerous to say protein consumption was as dangerous as lighting a cigarette.

“Sending out statements such as this can damage the effectiveness of important public health messages,” he told the Guardian. “They can help to prevent sound health advice from getting through to the general public. The smoker thinks ‘why bother quitting smoking if my cheese and ham sandwich is just as bad for me?'”